For Ryan Lichtenstein, what happened after his game-winning kick against Northwestern was a surreal blur. The kick split the uprights, time expired, mayhem broke out and punter Rob Long lifted him into air.

‘I didn’t even realize Rob picked me up,’ laughed Lichtenstein, Syracuse freshman place kicker. ‘He was pretty strong.’

Sweet redemption for another kick in his life, a kick he had no control over. As a junior at Gateway (Pa.) High School, Lichtenstein missed an extra point in overtime. In the state championship game. The opponent, Pittsburgh Central Catholic, scored, made their extra point and Gateway lost, 35-34.

Lichtenstein took all the heat – from students and media alike. Thing is, it wasn’t his fault. The ball was sliding off the field-goal tee by the time he put his plant foot down. He had no chance.

The ball crashed into the line and crushed his school’s dreams.

‘And Ryan never said a word about it, said Terry Smith, the Gateway head coach, ‘which tells you who he is,’. ‘Everyone beat him up, but he never said a word.’

Meet Lichtenstein, a true freshman that’s lived through the highs (see: Northwestern win) and the lows (see: state title game). He’s quiet, shuns attention and has built a strong immunity to pressure-packed moments.

After a handful of kickers quit the team in August, Syracuse (2-4, 0-2 Big East) settled on the walk-on from Monroeville, Pa. So far, it has paid off. Through six games, Lichtenstein has made 9-of-10 field goal attempts, highlighted by that walk-off against Northwestern.

For the record, it’s ‘LICK-tin-steen.’ He’s heard his name pronounced wrong some 35 different ways – sometimes with z’s, other times with a ‘ch’ sound. Even his new head coach Doug Marrone pronounced it wrong through preseason camp.

How Lichtenstein ended up in Syracuse dates back to this February. Lichtenstein remembers sitting in Smith’s office on National Letter of Intent Day with zero scholarship offers. Minnesota, Villanova and Syracuse had shown interest. But no offers.

Considering Syracuse had just hired a new head coach, Lichtenstein e-mailed Dan Conley, the SU assistant that had been recruiting him. Conley told him to call back in April. By then, Marrone and the new staff would have a better handle of the kicking situation.

Which meant Lichtenstein had to wait. And wait.

‘I was pretty scared for a couple months,’ Lichtenstein said. ‘I didn’t really know what I was going to do.’

Time was running out. He needed to attend college – period – somewhere. So he started applying everywhere. Maybe he could walk onto a team later on, he thought. In the meantime, he kept in touch with SU special teams coach Bob Casullo ‘once or twice a month,’ he said.

Out in Syracuse, the kicking situation was grim. Following the graduation of Pat Shadle, holdover Austin Wallis was doing nothing to quell coaches’ fears. So Casullo and Co. compiled a list of four or five kickers they liked that were still available – free agents in limbo like Lichtenstein. Both sides stayed in regular contact throughout the spring and summer.

‘He always caught your eye,’ Casullo said. ‘There was always something about him that said, ‘Gee, this little guy’s got something.’ Accuracy, consistency, his technique was very smooth, his time.’

The final trait may have been what ultimately hooked Lichtenstein into Syracuse. He had wasted little motion from the snap to the kick. Each millisecond is costly.

‘One of the real hard things we had to overcome was that the kickers we inherited, their times were atrocious,’ Casullo said. ‘You can’t protect that long. You have to get rid of the ball in ‘X’ amount of time.’

With Lichtenstein, there was no hesitation, a habit coaches picked up on through film of Lichtenstein at Gateway and the personal workout videos he sent. Through dialogue on e-mail, Casullo told Lichtenstein to send such workout videos.

Good thinking, since those Gateway tapes provided limited sample space. Gateway’s offense rarely stalled. In three years as the kicker, Lichtenstein kicked only five, seven and six field goals, respectively. The offense scored 44, 57 and 70 touchdowns in Lichtenstein’s stay. Every one of Gateway’s tailbacks in the last five years has gone on to play Division I football.

Lichtenstein was rarely needed.

‘We just didn’t have the opportunity to showcase him,’ Smith said.

Yet still, he was unlike most high school kickers. When Lichtenstein decided to give up soccer for football, Smith didn’t require him to come to practice every day. He simply handed Lichtenstein the special teams schedule and said that’s when he could stop by. Once a week.

‘He disregarded that and came every day for the entire practice for his three years,’ Smith said.

Lichtenstein attended every offseason workout, every conditioning drill and every practice. Abnormal for a kicker, Smith said. This year, the Gateway coach has two soccer players as his kickers that stroll by the practice field for 45 minutes every Thursday and show up for Friday’s game.

‘He was truly a part of the team,’ Smith said. ‘He sweated like they sweat and worked like they worked.’

Eventually, after some stressful waiting, that hard work paid off. Lichtenstein took walk-on opportunity at Syracuse. Following the departure of Wallis and John Barker, Shane Raupers and Lichtenstein became the SU kickers. Raupers was the frontrunner. Lichtenstein was the underdog.

‘(Shane) was on scholarship and I was a walk-on, but I treated it as if we were both equal,’ Lichtenstein said. ‘I wanted open competition.’

Raupers quit the team and Lichtenstein became the starter. He hasn’t looked back since and is now on scholarship.

Four weeks ago, Smith was in a hotel in Washington. Justin King, a former Gateway player now on the St. Louis Rams, was going to play the Washington Redskins the next day. On the Web site ESPN360.com, Smith followed the Syracuse game against Northwestern. After Syracuse safety Max Suter picked off a pass in the waning moments, he sent Lichtenstein a text message.

He told Lichtenstein he’d make the game-winning kick.

‘I knew he wouldn’t get (the text), but I knew he’d do his thing,’ Smith said. ‘These are moments you dream of. As a kicker you always go through those three-seconds-left-on-the-clock (moments), and he did it.’

Lichtenstein was mobbed by teammates and the Carrier Dome field transformed into a platform of elation. This wasn’t his forte. Lichtenstein doesn’t like attention. Good or bad. Back as a junior at Gateway, he didn’t point any fingers after that botched extra point – a kick Smith said any pro kicker would miss. He could have. But he didn’t.

Sitting with his hands tucked inside the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, Lichtenstein said his confidence was the same before the Northwestern kick as it is after. Nothing has changed.

Something else that won’t change any time soon: Everyone pronouncing his name wrong. Even after the kick of his life, he doesn’t see anything changing there.

‘Probably not, I don’t know,’ Lichtenstein said. ‘We’ll see.’

thdunne@syr.edu

Published on October 12, 2009 at 12:00 pm